He’d forgotten he was supposed to be listening, because as he’d been undressing Dare with his eyes, she’d been doing the same to him, and he could feel the heat between them, which made his cock harden. She definitely noticed, which only made him harder and now there was a hint of challenge in her gaze and he actually entertained a thought about where he could take her. Idiot. He couldn’t think shit like that at work. He wasn’t some teenage school kid with damn little control over raging hormones.
Why could Avis never get to the point?
“Family’s kicking up a fuss obviously. Political nightmare so why not just throw one more live grenade in the mix, huh? Hate these exchange programs but we’ve sent five to foster goodwill or what-the-fuck-ever. So now we got a woman. Not just a woman. A Knight. Damn. Leonard’s granddaughter. Heard she’s hot as hell and tatted up. Can’t believe women do that shit. Met her mother once. Victoria’s Secret model or something. Seth Knight was supervising pyrotechnics and fell like an imploded building. Within two weeks he’d quit his job, left his family and had proposed. Love. That’s one word for it. Huh!”
Lock watched Dare as the conversation stretched out. She leaned against one of the trucks, one arm cocked behind her head like a pillow. She blew out some air to cool her upper lip that glistened in the summer heat of the bay. The shock of platinum hair fell over one eye and her puff of air ruffled it, and his fingers itched to tangle in the silky softness.
“Damn fool. Now we got ourselves some head case.”
Lock still had no idea where Avis was going, but he was getting a bad feeling.
Why the fuck could Avis never talk a straight line?
“So, tag, Ryker, you’re it. I know I can trust you to keep it in your pants.”
Lock felt like he’d just followed a stone. A big one.
“Her name is... damn.” Lock could hear papers shuffling. “Damn fool name. Darington. Practically daring your kid to cause trouble. Anyway, she’s yours for three months. You deal with her. She’s been passed around two Brisbane stations already, or three. Not her fault. Just no one has stones up there with the damn investigation and fucking Knights in every station. You’ll have some breathing room down here. But keep her in line.”
Lock felt like he was going to choke. There wasn’t enough damn air in the truck bay. Dare was here. Three months. Working with him. Off-fucking-limits.
“Show her the ropes in urban firefighting.” Avis was starting to sound relieved, which meant he felt he’d solved the problem he’d dumped. “She’s got experience so it won’t be a total cluster fuck although I heard she’s a bit of a headline grabber. Maybe goes rogue, but she’s got commendations and some medal for whatever from the army. Now she’s a smokejumper so not lacking for courage. And she was a combat medic in the army so she’s got balls like all the Knights. Probably itching for a bushfire thinking she can show us a thing or two, but I need her time here be as uneventful as hell.”
Lock was not sure that was a suitable analogy. Nor was the rest of it, because as far as keeping it in his pants with Dare, that truck had already roared out of the station. And now he was going to get what he’d dreamed of. More Dare. Only none of her. Just the ironic smile that played on her lips and sent heat straight to his cock that was going to have to stay in his pants.
As if in protest, it got harder. And naturally Dare watched. Her smile grew in direct proportion to his cock. She bit down on her plump bottom lip reminding him of how she tasted.
“Great that’s all settled.” Avis sounded happy, the bastard, but Lock wasn’t even sure if he’d said a word with all of Avis’ stream of consciousness commentary. All Lock could think about was Dare was here. With him. And he was going to have to pretend that the best night of his life never fucking happened.
“So, yeah, know I can trust you. She’s a VIP because of her family, but I’ve heard her commander at the base up in ahhhhh...” Clearly Avis was reading something. “Got it. Her commander wanted her to take a leave after the last fire. Two of the team died. Not her fault, but she was the last one out. Dragged a rookie with her.”
Died. Lock felt like he’d just been hit on the back by a cricket bat. He couldn’t suck in enough air. Two of her team had died? How the hell did one recover from that with a damn exchange program to a metropolitan program an ocean away?”
“Felt she needed a complete break.”
Like she’d been working too hard and needed a damn vacation.
His breathing, elevated as he watched Dare watch him, tangled in his throat so he felt like he was choking. She was so beautiful. But she must be hiding a lot of pain. He hurt for her. But he hurt for his team because pain could come out in unpredictable ways, and he was supposed to suit her up and shove her on a truck with his team at some point in the very near future. He felt sick. Sick for Dare. Sick because he had to be a station officer not a friend or a lover. Sick because he might be putting his team inadvertently at risk.
“So be careful. Not sure how damaged ‘damaged,’ is.” Avis stressed the word and snorted in disgust. “Damaged like she’s a box that got squashed in the post. Damn privacy laws. People just need to spell it out. Don’t need to tell you that. So keep her safe. Probably close. Enough action so she doesn’t think we’re babying her, but... ha, don’t need to tell you how to run your crew.”
Damaged.
The word rattled around in his head. Made his heart clench tight like a fist.
“Know I can trust you, Lock, to smooth all this out. She might be a bit out of sorts as she’s been tossed around Brisbane. Cowards. Know you’ll stone up. I’ll remember this as a favor. So we good?”
Lock felt anything but good.
Damaged.
“Good then,” Avis hung up.
Lock forced himself to breathe. He’d mastered the game face that everything was fine since he’d been twenty and in his third year at university when his parents had died in plane crash, leaving him to raise his two twelve-year-old twin brothers and his eight-year-old sister.
“Surprise again.” Dare struck a pose and a cheesy smile. “Looks like you just got the call telling you you’ve pulled the short straw.”
Chapter Five
They had problems immediately when Lock reached for her duffle.
“Would you pick that up for another firefighter coming on duty?” She challenged.
Fuck.
“Yeah,” he said, mostly honest.
“And they’d let you?” Dare sounded outraged as if he’d offered to carry her over the threshold.
He ran his hand through his still damp hair.
“Follow me. I’ll show you to the call rooms and the kitchen.”
She lifted both bags to her shoulder, giving him a quick peek down her loose shirt and thin cotton singlet. She stood up quickly, not seeming encumbered by her gear or the back pack that she already wore. He found himself trapped in her strange colored blue-green eyes.
He opened his mouth to speak but nothing seemed adequate. The night he’d met her, he’d liked that she was tall so she could almost look him in the eye. But now he felt challenged because he kept remembering the other thing he’d liked about her height—when he’d kissed her, her body had matched up so closely to his. Even as he had the thought, his body responded. Christ, he was an idiot.
Avis’ “I can trust you,” rang in his ears. Fantastic. He was going to be sidelined from the one woman who’d made him feel more than mild attraction in years and have to watch and perhaps run interference as she worked alongside his crew. How many of those guys were single? Too many. Fuck.
He took the stairs two at a time.
“I’ve got one crew out on a call,” he said, feeling like the silence was stretching out past the awkward zone.
He could no longer think of Dare as a woman he wanted to... hell, what? Date? Make love to? Hang out with? He’d wanted it all with her. Stupid because he’d only met her, and she’d rocked his world, and he’d allowed his impulses to rule instead of his
brain. The result, just like so many other times in his life when he finally felt he was on the brink of achieving what he’d worked so hard for—a shot at the Olympic team, happiness, freedom, peace—his goal was snatched out of his hands.
Dare with her buzz cut and one shock of platinum silk that fell across her face, and her tattoos and gorgeous eyes and long, slim, hard body, and take no prisoners personality had shaken him up but good. He was all-in, jacked up, and now completely sidelined.
Head in the game, not your goddamn pants.
“Here’s where the women bunk in when they’re on call,” he said. “You can store your stuff here while I...” He wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do.
Show her around, yeah, but he didn’t have her on the schedule. Didn’t have her on his budget. And where the hell was she supposed to stay when she wasn’t driving him insane with desire for what he couldn’t have?
He realized belatedly that instead of staring at Dare like she was a meal and he a starving dog during Avis’ conversation, he should have asked a lot more questions. He couldn’t recall saying anything.
Idiot.
Dare shrugged out of her backpack and over-night bag and slid her large duffle under a bed.
“Is this my official orientation?” she asked.
He swallowed. Official. Yeah, he’d fucked that up well and good. He loved the way her eyes glinted in the light that filtered in through the open window. And her skin seemed to glow. And he could smell her. Honeysuckle or jasmine, he always got those mixed up, and orange. He fucking loved oranges.
“I pretty much fucked up any official aspects of your exchange the day we met,” he admitted in a low voice.
“You okay with that?”
Hell no.
“It’s not like we did anything wrong.” Dare shrugged, making their one night together look so easy—to have and to forget.
He felt a rush of something. Anger? Hurt? Both? He’d kept his emotions on such a tight leash for so long he didn’t even recognize them anymore.
“I don’t regret it, do you?” Dare asked, a hint of challenge in her voice and the tilt of her chin.
To hell with it.
He kicked the door to the women’s bunk area shut with his foot, and the slam caused the window to shake.
“Of course not,” he said, not caring that he was being too obvious, but after discovering his then wife Melissa and his former coworker Stephen Knight had been having an affair, and later learning about the others, he couldn’t stomach deceit. “I was... am crazy attracted to you. I wasn’t the one who cut out without saying goodbye.”
Obvious much? Even he heard the edge of hurt wrapped around the anger.
Dare didn’t wince, but he did see the long, graceful line of her throat move as she swallowed, and he was such a goner that even that was a turn on. “I wanted to see you again.”
Needed to.
“I even tried to get your number from Logan, who shut that down but quick so, no, I don’t regret making love with you.”
She paled a little under her tan, but she didn’t back off from him. Damn the temperature in the room seemed to skyrocket, and he had to resist the urge to unfasten the top button of his uniform shirt.
“Good,” she said, “I like you too.”
Her fingers reached out and barely grazed his tight jaw.
“But obviously now,” he said, spitting out each word like bullets, “everything’s changed.”
“Yeah, I figured you for a boy scout.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Even though you were unprepared. Rookie move.”
He stared at her. Was she teasing him? At such a serious moment? But, damn, if he didn’t find his muscles slightly unlocking, and he had to fight the urge to smile.
“I have a tendency to jump literally before I think. Not sleeping around exactly, but I didn’t try to shut down the attraction because I didn’t know I’d be too hot to handle in Brisbane and sent to Melbourne,” she explained.
A muscle ticked in his jaw and he sucked in a breath.
“Look at you,” she said softly. “Is my working here going to be so bad?”
The catch in her voice nearly undid him and when she cupped his cheek all his good intentions were shucked like a summer corn husk.
“Dare.” He stepped closer into her.
“Hey.” A woman walked into the room from the bathroom wearing only a towel and an amused expression. “You going for gender reassignment surgery Lock?”
He jumped away from Dare so fast, his back hit the door.
“Or you dyslexic and thought that the women sign on the door read man?”
“Excuse me,” Lock said pulling himself together and falling back into what he thought of as his leadership face and stance. “I was just showing Darington to the women’s bunks. She’s on an exchange program from—” He broke off realizing that he didn’t have any paperwork.
She’d told him she was a smoke jumping the night they met, but all he could remember from Avis was the one damning word—damaged. The rest was gone. And Dare had talked a little about her job, but he hadn’t asked any follow-up. No, he’d been too intent on getting her naked and acrobatically fucking them both senseless. He’d not just broken his sexual dry spell; he’d crushed it to dust.
“Montana.” Dare rescued him. “Glacier Creek, but I work all over the Western United States.” She strode forward and even though Mim was wrapped a bit too loosely in a towel for Lock’s comfort, Dare shook the firefighter’s hand. “I’m Darington Knight.”
“One of the Knights.” Mim whistled. “Sorry about your gramps. He was a hella commander and man. Smokejumper. Wow,” Mim said. “Jumping out of planes. What are you doing in Melbourne?”
“It’s our slow season in the forest service,” Dare said. “So I thought I’d try to round out my skills with some... um...” She looked at him as if seeking answers or permission, but since this was all news to him, he had nothing. “Metropolitan experience.” Dare seemed to find her inspiration. “I’m here for three months.”
“You didn’t say anything about us getting an exchange,” Mim said, her blonde, nearly nonexistent eyebrows rose. “Who’s leaving?” She demanded of Lock.
“No one.”
He knew he shouldn’t promise that, but no way was he losing one of his team because the senior station officers in Brisbane had overripe cherries for balls.
“Who’s getting their shifts cut?” Mim’s voice had a panicked edge.
“No one.” He sounded like he believed it, and there’d be hell if he couldn’t deliver that promise.
“Mim Arnold,” Mim seemed to rally. “Been here two years. Just back on the truck this month after having a baby and taking six months leave.”
“Congratulations,” Dare said politely. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy.” Mim’s face softened slightly then she looked back at Dare. “You always set up in the states? You sound like it. I’ve never been.” Mim’s towel slipped a little more, but she still didn’t make any effort to stop it. That sometimes happened when people got comfortable spending a lot of their professional time working closely together and being thrust in and out of intense and dangerous situations at a moment’s notice. What the hell was he going to do if Dare started striding around the common room in shorts and a sports bra?
Shit.
“So when did you two meet?” Mim asked into the swelling silence.
“Today.”
“Funeral.”
They both answered Mim at the same time.
She looked back and forth between them. “Huh.”
“I’ll let you get um... dressed and settled.” He looked at Dare, avoiding Mim’s curious stare. Then he backtracked out of the room, closing the door behind him. He needed to call Avis back to get some facts and information, and then he and Dare needed to have a talk to get their facts straight and some damn rules in place.
Awkward.
Dare wanted to laugh, but Lock had looked so uncomfo
rtable, and she didn’t want him to feel she would cause him problems with his team. She was a team player by desire, not always by practice because she had a tendency to go rogue when the situation called for it, but when Lock got the slash of pink on his cheekbones, he was pretty hard to resist. She’d enjoyed his embarrassment a little too much. She didn’t mind being gossiped about now. She was used to it, but she had a feeling Lock was private. And arrow straight.
A rule boy. And since she’d finally clawed out of the dark hell following Ryan’s death when she had been seventeen, she’d loved to break rules. It had been her promise to him, to live for both of them so she’d shucked off her desire to please and to fit in in favour of charging into life like Ryan had.
“So?” Mim smirked at her. “That didn’t look like a just met at a funeral or just met today to me.”
“It was,” Dare said breezily. “I met Lachlan at my grandfather’s memorial service two weeks ago. He worked with him for several years and is really good friends with a couple of my cousins so we’re practically related.”
Okay. Too thick.
Mim was tiny compared to her, but definitely savvy. She rolled her eyes.
“Right.”
“Lock’s a nice guy,” Dare said in the understatement of the year. “I thought I was going to be working out of Brisbane, but I think the investigation into my grandfather has most of my family pissed off and on edge, and people are taking sides, and no one wanted me in their middle so here I am. I think the chief administrator for Melbourne wasn’t thrilled either, and made a few calls before sending me here. Lock’s just too nice to say no.”
Dare nearly choked at her double entendre.
Mim stared hard at her. Then she shrugged.
“Whatever. Lock’s a fair senior officer and disciplined. He hired me and when I was still on my probation period, I fell pregnant, and he didn’t even bitch about it. He could have let me go, but he moved me into communications, set up the maternal leave and took me back so I’m not going to cause him any trouble ever.”
Burning Both Ends Page 5